Adults and kids alike warm up to Disney’s “Frozen” film

According to a grade school teacher of my acquaintance, little girls are crazy about the Disney movie “Frozen.” I can second that opinion since “Let It Go” is the number one over-requested song of girls 5 to 15 at my Friday night music job at Barba Yianni. The first hour there (7 to 8 PM) tends to be heavy on families with children of all ages. “You Are My Sunshine” is the most requested song by boys. Go figure!?

I decided to bite the ice cube and see what all of the “Frozen” fuss is about. The blockbuster film has your typical Disney two track entertainment with a straight-forward story line for the kids and little visual and verbal jokes for the adults.

Set in Norway and loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen,” the visuals feature gorgeous costumes, fjords, picturesque architecture and rosemaling, a Norwegian folk art. The amusing-looking horses with color blocked Mohawk manes are pretty close to how Norwegian fjord horses appear, aside from being taller than real-life in the movie.

Some jokes are decidedly juvenile (booger-eating, for example), but then the creators bring the adults back into the joke during the credits with this statement: “The views and opinions expressed by Kristoff in the film that all men eat their own boogers are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Walt Disney Company or the filmmakers. Neither The Walt Disney Company nor the filmmakers make any representation of the accuracy any such views and opinions.”

The creators have miraculously melded computer-generated images with hand-drawn animation giving a 3D effect to not only the characters, but to clothing and scenery. They went so far as to bring a live reindeer into the animation studio so they could study its visual characteristics.

A big reason to rejoice over the movie, is Jennifer Lee, the talented director who was also the sole screenwriter. Unbelievably, Ms. Lee is the first female to direct a full length animated Disney film and the first woman solo writer of a Disney screenplay since Linda Woolverton wrote “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991. Mickey Mouse has been a little chauvinist, wouldn’t ya’ say?

My only regret is not having seen this in a theater with surround sound and big screen images. My old tube TV just didn’t do the audio-visuals justice. The film was entertaining nonetheless despite my low tech presentation. Now I can be tired of the song “Let It Go,” at least in context. If you want to have an instant topic of conversation with any kid from five to fifteen, catch this current Disney animated classic.